Friday, May 1, 2015

We have received some awesome feedback and many words of encouragement about all of the plans we discussed a couple of weeks ago. We have also received many questions, so we will answer as many of them as we can in a post dedicated to each new phase. We will be starting with the food truck: FoodEx.

Where did the name come from?
Well, we were discussing names and we wanted to include the word "food" and our current tagline is "an edible experience" (also the name of this blog), so we shortened it to FoodEx. We like the fact that the "Ex" represents "experience", "excitement" and "express", three things that we hope to bring to the community.

What type of food will you be serving?
As you know, we are huge proponents of seasonal and local. We will do out best to prepare foods that are seasonal and use the best and closest to the Big Country ingredients. Once we have our gardens, greenhouses and Farmers Market (Emerald Farms, more on it in a future post) up and running, seasonal and local gets a lot easier. :-)

Okay, seasonal and local, but what are some examples?
That is a harder question to answer, because we create what we like to eat. We will always be bringing new dishes to the truck. This includes Thai, Vietnamese, French, Spanish, Indian, Italian, German and on and on. We will also be doing our own interpretations of classic dishes and fun and exciting new creations.

Okay, okay...just give me some specifics?
Well, you will see some of the following:

We are striving to only have one or two offerings each time we go out. We want to focus on providing you the best quality product, at a fair price. Plus, there will always be something new to try. We all have to eat to survive, let's make it fun to eat!!

Where and when will you be rolling?
We hope to be up and running in the next 90 days. The initial trailer is being built and then we will finish it out.

We want to focus on lunch. Our goal is to roll a couple of times a week for lunch. We will be doing brunch a couple of Saturdays a month and some exciting monthly events in the evening at cordell's. We have already had many people volunteer locations and we are excited about them. We are always looking for additional locations as well, so if you have one, give us a shout. Our goal is to be accessible, quick, healthy and flavorful.

Will you do private events or caterings?
Yes, of course. We are all about bringing people together with food. Sharing a meal together breaks down so many barriers and creates friendships and relationships on an intimate level. We want to connect our community through food. We would love the opportunity to work with you to put together a fun and relaxing event or party. It will be a blast!

So, as you can see, we are excited about what is to come. We cannot wait to get rolling and to start creating experiences and new relationships. We thank you so much for your awesome support already and we look forward to continuing to earn your business and friendship.

Thursday, April 9, 2015

First of all, we apologize for not posting to
this blog for two years. We got busy
with other projects (including physically building our home, with the help of some awesome friends and family, especially one superman friend and one studly father) and forgot to keep up with our posting. Well, that is about to change. Not only are we providing an update and a
vision for where we are headed, we are also re-launching the blog. We hope to make a blog post weekly. We are not making any promises, but we do not
plan to have another two years between posts. J

Okay, now that that is out of the way, let’s talk about
why you are here. Odds are, you saw our
Facebook, Instagram or Twitter post about new and exciting things or you just
happened to stumble onto here, either way, we are glad you are here. We will outline the new and exciting things
below, but first, a little history. We
have spent the past 15+ years (25+ for Jason) planning, dreaming and hoping for
the cordell’s vision to come to life. In
2011, the first phase of that dream became a reality when cordell’s officially
opened. Since that day, we have been
planning the next phases, phases 2-6. We
believed we had them in the proper order, but over the past year or so, we felt
like we were being led to do things in a different order. So, we have done that, we have changed the
order. We believe that God is leading us
to the same goals, just in His order, not ours.
That being said, here is the new order:

Phase 1b – Acquire Land – We have been blessed to
purchase 11.11 acres of land on Highway 89, half way between Abilene and
Buffalo Gap. This land backs up to the
creek and has a working water well, which will become important when we discuss
phase 3. This land will be the future
site of many new things for cordell’s.

Phase 2 – Start a Food Truck – We are in the process of
building out our new food trailer and hope to have it up and running in the
next 90-120 days. We already perform
private parties and cooking classes, but this new trailer will give us the
ability to sell to the public and still do the private work. We are
excited about the menu and hope you will like it. We are calling it FoodEx. It is short for Food Experience, Food Express
and Food Excitement. We will have the
same standards for the food on the trailer as we do for the store.

Phase 3 – Gardens and Greenhouses – We are looking
forward to getting our gardens, greenhouses and orchards up and running on the
new land. We will also have a small
Farmers Market on site for the selling of the produce. We will use the produce on the food trailer,
in future classes and will sell to local chefs and restaurants. We will call it Emerald Farms. All of the money raised will go towards an
organization we are creating and hope to turn into a non-profit someday.

Phase 4 – Thrive – We will discuss this organization more
in its own post. We are forming a board
of directors and hope to take it non-profit at some point. More to come…

Phase 5 – the Green Door – This is our flagship
restaurant. We will focus on seasonality
and local as much as possible. We will have a prefix menu with one seating.
Whether dining in our new Texas Farmhouse or outside in our landscaped
gardens, it will be a wonderful evening.
It will take a couple of years to complete this phase. However, it will be worth the wait.

Phase 6 – Flagship cordell’s – This is the final phase
for now. At some point we will build a
new cordell’s on our new land and will expand its offerings. We will add more activities, products and
lunches to its already large product offerings.
As with phase 5, it will take a few years to reach this phase.

As you can see, we have big plans. We believe that this is what we have been
created to do. Even though it seems very
daunting and scary sometimes, we keep moving forward. We are trying to not lean on our own
understandings and to trust. We
appreciate your prayers and your support.
More to come as we make more decisions.